A thirty-two year old homeschool graduate who once promised her mother she didn't need to learn grammar because she'd never be an author is hopelessly a writer at heart. I'm a Christian who loves to ask thoughtful questions, and who finds thought-provoking material in unlikely sources. A lady in waiting, I'm the oldest of six children still living at home, pursuing the efficient acquisition of knowledge through books and practice.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Why does "vacuum" have two u's, IN A ROW? It's a weird word. But, looking at another double-u word might help our understanding: "continuum". This totally makes me think of the bad guy we love to hate, and his immortal omnipotent (sort of) race in Star Trek, the Q. Not to be confused with the "collective", which is Borg. Anyway. We actually use a recognizable root of "continuum", so it is easier to see that the last "um" is a suffix to indicate something about word forms. To quote Matthew Lancey on Quora.com, "Double U was/is fairly common in Latin because of its complex system of word endings to indicate case, gender and so on."

So. "Continue" (back in Latin spelled "continuare") becomes "continuum" when the verb becomes a noun*, and "vacare" or something like it becomes "vacuus" (adjective?) and "vacuum" (noun?) in Latin. Etymology Online says that the word is probably a loan-translation from the Greek "kenon" which only slightly resembles "vacare", "vain", or "vacuus" - all of which are attested words in the family tree of "vacuum". We had the great idea back in the 17th century English speaking world of spelling "vacuus" as "vacuous", which is clearer on the pronunciation and only slightly less obviously Latin.

A lot of sources online (really reliable ones like Yahoo Answers) say that there are two u's because how else would you know to pronounce two different vowel sounds there? But, um, I don't really think that's how words work. These people are either gullible, or bluffing the Internet looking for the gullible.

What I really want to know is why there is only one "c". If there are ever seemingly pointless double consonants in words, it tempts me to double other lletterrs also. ("Embarrass", anyone? There are two doubles, and I spell it wrong the first time, every time.) Just saying. Though I must say that if the "c" were a "k" like it should be, for some reason I wouldn't feel the need to double it in the same way. But then, the vowel's pronunciation would bother me. And if we insist on leaving only one "c" in our English transliteration, could we pronounce the "a" as a long "a" like in "bacon"? Or maybe we could try "bacoon", "baakon", "bakun", "bacconn"?

*In my life, I am much more tempted to turn nouns into verbs. I imagine this is historically predominant, also. Therefore, when I am keeping my tone intentionally casual, I say things like "churching", "small-group-ing", "dishes-ing". Verbs are a lot more fun, if they have a description built into them. My preschool-teacher-friend also says that kids initially think much more in pictures than in words, so it is good if we can keep our speech so vividly picturey.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

This is a recipe describing the way I have been experimentally baking these days. Recipes are not the boss of us; they are tools and guides, and the more we understand about what makes a good dish, the less we have to follow exact measurements and specific ingredients.

I just can't call these cookies.
Because if I call them cookies, people expecting cookies will frown at me, and
think I'm a bad baker. These are healthy(er) things shaped like cookies, with
chocolate chips like cookies, but not really cookies. They are a dessert.

I told my friend's kids, who sampled these, that I would send their mom the recipe. I don't particularly expect her to make them, and I don't especially expect any of you to make them either. As her husband pointed out, they're pretty expensive cookies. One advantage of
them, though, is that they are gluten and dairy free, and with growing numbers of people attempting such dietary restrictions, I thought I'd try them out.

Process in a food processor for
5-10 minutes, scraping sides occasionally, until it makes a
"butter":

3-5 hands-full of almonds and/or
cashews and/or peanuts (peanuts will have a stronger flavor) (substitute 1/2 cup
total nut butter from a jar if you want... keep extra on hand in case the dough
is too soupy)

Add:

1 can drained garbanzo
beans/chickpeas (Watch for good deals on these, places like Big Lots or HMart or
Trader Joes, or get your friends to give you the about-to-expire ones off their
pantry shelves...)

1 egg (or egg yolk, particularly if
you're short of nut butter, as the whites will make the dough
runnier) (The egg is optional, but I think it greatly improves the texture.)

A sprinkle to 1/2 tsp. of baking
soda

A sprinkle to 1/2 tsp. of baking
powder

A sprinkle to 1/2 tsp. of salt
(on the lesser end if the canned beans were salted, or if you are using a nut butter from a
jar, which happens to have salt as the ingredient, or if your nuts were
salted)

1-2 hands-full brown
sugar

A quick pour of
vanilla

A drizzle of maple syrup or honey
(optional) (I want to try molasses. Molasses is amazing. But it will also
overtake the other flavors.)

Process these with the nut butter
until smooth. If dough is so soupy that it won't stay in a blob on a cookie
sheet, but rather will puddle before it even starts to cook, you need more nut
butter. Another option is to sprinkle some oats in there. (Apparently there is
some debate that I don't understand about oats having gluten or not. Choose
according to your level of intolerance and hype-acceptance.)

Add:

2-4 hands-full chocolate chips
(Guittard Real Semisweet or some other allergy-friendly brand if you care about dairy
free or soy free)

Stir this in by hand.

Chill
dough. Like, make these before a meal, chill during the meal, and pull it out
after you've rinsed the dishes and the table, to bake some up for
dessert.

Preheat oven to 350. Drop small
spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet. Cookies will start at about 1.5 to 2 inches and
spread to about 2.5 inches as they bake. They bake for 15 minutes. (Other
recipes I read said 20-25, but it doesn't improve the texture and it does give the bottoms a kind of weird burned bean taste...) Nut Butter Bites won't remove from the
pan as easily as cookies, because they don't have the same kind of greasy fats
as butter or Crisco. I didn't have much trouble, just know that there will be a
little bit of cake-like residue on the pan, like the inside of a used muffin cup
liner.

I think they're best warm. They're
better if 1) you're not expecting a cookie, and 2) you don't think about them
being basically hummus with chocolate chips.

These nut butter bites are good for
you, though. There is protein from the beans and nuts. Nuts and beans have
minerals in them, and vitamins, that we US Americans need and don't get enough of.
And the nuts (not so much peanuts, keep in mind) have those useful kinds of fats
that we don't get enough of either.